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its been like the mediterranean all day… i suppose this weather makes people think of holidays.

yesterday i was with a fellow naturist, he is visiting london from devon, where he lives. and he mentioned he is thinking of holidaying in vera playa for 2wks in september. he has just retired in march this year. he has travelled mainly in europe, when he takes his holidays from work. he says he has been working non stop since the time he started working. but he has not been to any naturist place.

i seem to be meeting quite a lot of guys who are retiring… it is inevitable i guess, more people are now coming up to retirement age. so there are long days stretching out in front of him where he will have no need to do anything. travelling is a good way of filling up the time, and for most people that is the popular option. i hope he does go to vera playa as i would like to know how it is now, and whether it has retained its naturist ways.

i have been seeing tv programs about buying property in europe, and i find they are becoming irrelevant, now that we are leaving the EU. i think those programs will be abandoned in future. does any brit still want to buy properties there when it is so uncertain if they will be allowed to live there… or when their health care is not free any more?

after we leave , we can only go there for short visits, though if they give 6month visitors visas like they do when foreigners visit the uk, ( i think it is very generous to give visitors 6months stays) even a visitors visa is long enough really. and so maybe a tv program about places to rent might be more relevant. haha. though not so exciting to watch.

i have done all my travelling when i was working, so i dont feel that travel bug anymore. just as well, isn’t it? its quite expensive to fly to europe. in the past we could fly for £30 rtn, that is now impossible to get.

people complain that old people always say it was better in the olden days, but it really is. i suppose it could be said that we (oh look, i said we, does that mean i have finally acknowledge i am an old man then?) tend to look on the olden days with rose tinted glasses… but i try hard to find fault with the olden days and i find it difficult. it really is better in the olden days. and this is not only because all of us were younger and healthier too , bursting with good health, and so why shouldn’t we look at those days as being better.

yesterday was a cloudy day, so i stayed in all day, and felt sleepy at about 8.30pm and thought i shall just take a short nap, but when i next woke up it was 3am, and noticed simon sleeping next to me. he must have come back from essex. at least i thought he went yesterday and i thought he would be gone for a few days, as he tends to do when his work shift allows him. but i dont really know his schedule of work, so he might have gone to work and it might be this shift is a long 10hour shift, who knows really…

this morning, i woke to find he has gone. i am glad he did it so quietly that it did not wake me up. not sure if this time he has gone to essex, leaving before the traffic charge imposed by us being in zone one kicks in at 7am. i must say i dont bother to keep up with his work shift patterns, that way i dont have to worry about him. i always believe a person must be free to go and come whenever he likes.

my friend john had gone too, back to the usa. i think he enjoys staying here, because i dont place any restrictions on him about when he comes or goes. and he is not expected to tell me what he is doing either. haha. i am very easy about these things.

anyway i went online for about an hour after i woke up and then went back to sleep and woke up now and it is about 11am. what a nice long sleep i had. very refreshing and i can do it because i dont have any appointments etc anymore. isn’t it great? one of the joys of retirement. and one of the joys of not needing to work.

in case u think i must have a big pension, to be able to afford it, i can tell you it is not necessary to have a lot of money to retire. so many times we hear of financial experts saying u need a large pension pot to be able to sustain the lifestyle u are used to. but i say you will not want to live that kind of lifestyle u had whilst working. the travelling, or spending. like me , you might find you dont fancy doing those things or buying those things anymore. those who lie awake worrying about it can rest easy. my own experience tells me there is no need to have a large amount of money to live a happy retirement.

though i must make one caveat, you must be living in the uk after retirement. this is because u have the nhs. and if u receive your pension in £s , then at least the exchange rate wont affect u too much. as people retiring in europe now realise, the drop in the exchange rate can affect their income significantly. of course the £ could go up too, but i think i can predict that the trend is a lower £. it is traditionally the only way a country can offset its overspending. by letting the value of its currency slowly drift down. you might say that is cheating its people but it is a way of collectively allowing everyone to pay for it. haha.

though not businesses, because they can raise their prices and maintain the profit. i have noticed that in this system the companies gain a lot , they never have to pay inheritance taxes, and they can find lots of ways to offset tax. and what is more they are subjected to a fix rate of tax, the business tax of 15% or so. and likely to go down too. unlike personal taxes that can go high to as much as 50% or more, if u include national insurance. the playing field is skewed towards companies and businesses.

it pays for any rich person to make himself into a business. i can foresee a time when there wont be any rich person as such. he will be a family business. and all the sons and daughters will be named as beneficiaries of that company, maybe with shares to it. or with trusts created for them that will ring fence the amount of tax they pay.

but as for us individuals , we continue to enjoy our lives because wealth is not a big factor in how much u enjoy it. once u reach a certain point in income, your happiness does not increase in proportion after that. if u still think it does, i hope u do find out one day that it does not and that u can be very happy even though u dont earn a lot of money.

added. of course i just realise that your idea of retirement may be entirely different to what u read here about what i do. to you, what i am doing may be a living hell . haha. looking at what i do, it is not a lot. a lot of things happen in my mind. i have long ago stopped measuring my life by how much and how many things i do or see or how busy i am. to me being busy is hell… to have every sec on my life accounted for and planned for is hell. but maybe not to you. to have nothing planned or to have no goals may be hell to you. in which case of course my kind of life will not be for you.

i hear people say they dont like grocery shopping for food. but i enjoy buying food, and cooking it.

yesterday i get the joy of finding minced angus beef, 500mg,reduced from £4 to 80p, and they dont even expire till 13 jan. not often i get to see such reductions on beef, so i bought 4 of them. and had a delicious meal of one of the packs last night. the rest i freezed. i think this hunting for reduced price bargains like this is part of the fun and contributes to why i like it so much. and as a side effect i found that when i do find such bargains, i really enjoy eating it. i think if i were to just buy the beef whenever i want, it wont be the same. eating it often wont generate the intense desire and fulfillment that comes when i eat it once in a while.

for those people who dont know how to cook, or cook in a very rudimentary fashion, buying ready made foods only, i dont know how they spend their time.

without the periods of food hunting and food cooking, they must have a lot of time on their hands, esp if they are retired and not working. of course they might say well that is why mylife is so much more interesting than yours. haha. i have lots of things to do than to spend time buying food and cooking it and making it the highlight of my life. haha. maybe they are right, but i dont envy them. i cannot think of anything u can do at this late stage of your life that is as easy and enjoyable as shopping for food and cooking it. and eating the result.

maybe they spent all the time dozing in the sun. haha. or sleeping in their beds. that would certainly eat into their time and make it fly by.

i am so glad of reading too. glad that i can read, that my eyesight is still ok that it does not make reading difficult. it makes me really glad of eyesight. the blind must feel very isolated as there are so many things they cannot do. i think of all the senses, the sense of sight is the most important.

added12.54pm 13.1.16, the reduced foods section can create a fearful scrum with people fighting to get the food. as happened in this tesco supermarket and a person got hurt. but it depands on what night u go. i went on monday, which is a quiet day, and no one was fighting to get the food. perhaps that tesco is staggering its reductions to stop the fights happening. that would be a good thing if they do.

LondonMonday 9.9.13Its been raining practically the whole morning, a fine rain which has been the characteristic of the rain falling around this time of the year. No big torrential rain with thunder like in summer.

I had been out earlier in the morning, taking the bus to Brixton to buy garlic, ginger, onions, tomatoes. I can get them for 50p a pack, unlike in supermarkets. Brixton is quite busy even though it was raining. Not so much the stalls, but the main road, where the buses run through. Many people taking the buses. One lady I was standing next to, lost the wheel on her shopping trolley. I told her she might like to put it back on, and she asked me to do it. So I tried to, but it was not easy to put it back. When her bus came, the wheel rim came off again. She just smiled ruefully at me, and dragged it to her bus.

Now I am back for some time, and had my lunch of spaghetti pasta with homemade tomato sauce using 6 tomatoes I bought; and looking out at the rain falling on the ground, and being rather happy that I am inside and the rain is outside. Haha.

added. 14.9.13 i like a bargain, even though i am not really that destitute that i have to buy cheap. i like to buy the basic spaghetti, as i dont taste any difference from the expensive ones; and i am glad to say the tesco in clapham south is selling them at 15p for 500mg. i used to buy asda basic spag for 18p, but recently i went there and found that it is now 32p. glad to know that tesco is still selling them at that low price. it used to be that u can get the chinese instant noodles for 11p at asda, but now they have revert to their higher price of 15p. spag is just as good for use as noodles.

I notice that i might have given people the wrong impression that i am rather poor and have to seek out cheap goods. it is because i seem to harp on about buying cheap goods. dont get me wrong, i enjoy it. it is something i do to make my life interesting. pathetic i am sure u will be thinking, but then if it makes me happy, why not? right? haha.

I might go out again, just to the library, and to the sports centre for the swimming pool. I shall see how I feel. It is lovely not to have to work and have all the time to do what I like.

Talking of work, there are still old people who want to work. I have been reading a blog for oldies, where it reprinted a article by the oldie, a magazine that u have to pay for, and normally cannot read it but because he re-blogged it u can read it free in his blog. It is written by an old man who was made redundant and his experience trying to find another job at 59 yrs old. U can tell he wont find it easy to find work. The mere fact he is so close to retirement will make any employer reluctant to hire him and train him. Not to mention the employer also knows old people are not easy to train.

When u read it, u can see he does not want to get new certificates which he have to do if he wants the jobs. Simple jobs like truck driver, still requires a certificate. He actually found a job , a good one, quite early on, in the part one of this 2part article, but he found he cannot cope, it was too much for him and he had to leave.

So u can see old people being made redundant from their jobs have high expectations and also reluctant to learn new things. and they dont have the energy to do the jobs in the first place. he mentioned he was tired out during that first job he had. its no wonder so many are reluctant to hire an old person . i know it sounds like i am very unsympathetic. maybe it does, but i think i am only voicing some simple facts of life. we all have a working life span, and are at our optimum when we are at a certain period of our lives. when we are near retirement, that period is past.

i got a free coffee from waitrose and went tot he park and had a very pleasant time smelling all the roses.

Read an article in the standard today about an old building in horseferry road, just near where i live, being bought for £25million to build large 1bedroom flats for retired people who want to stay in london. ready in 2017. the flats are costly about £1million so only for the v rich pensioners. I am glad i bought mine ages ago at a fraction of the cost. and they will have very high service charges as they will have to pay the staff to cater to allthose old people’s needs.

seeing all this, i can see i have by happy accident found myself living a life what they have to spend a fortune on and paying only a fraction of what it costs them. I am now enjoying all the fun of living in london without the cost.

The building is near the end of its lease in 2015. i suppose they will have to pay some more to extend the lease. but it kind of shows that old people are beginning to see what has been clear to me for sometime. That london is ideal for the retired. Everything is nearby, theatres, films, art galleries, restaurants, clubs, etc and with the freedom pass giving free travel for over 60s on the tubes, rail, buses, trams, transport is free.No need for a car. even getting a taxi is cheaper because they are so central.

added.23.6.13 personally i can never understand why people want to buy such expensive flats in these old folk ghettos and pay such high service charges. they would be better just buying a groundfloor flat in some development with a caretaker.